This week Secaucus will get another store where shoppers can buy trendy clothes at discount prices. But the town will still lack the one business many shoppers want most: a supermarket.
On Thursday, national retailer TJ Maxx will open a 28,414-square-foot retail space in Mill Creek Mall, which has been undergoing renovations since October 2007.
The mall is among 200 properties owned and managed by commercial real estate giant Hartz Mountain Industries, Inc.
TJ Maxx will join five other national retail and entertainment brands coming to the refurbished Mill Creek.
A combined Toys “R” Us/Babies “R” Us superstore will debut later this fall in a 69,230-square-foot space. In the first half of 2009, the Sports Authority is scheduled to open a 47,250-square-foot store.
And Kerasotes will open Showplace, a 14-screen movie theater that will feature more than 2,000 stadium-style seats. The movie theater will encompass 59,110 square feet of space at the shopping center.
Kohl’s, which was in Mill Creek before the renovations began, has remained open during the redevelopment project and plans to stay in the shopping center.
Although Stop & Shop, which closed in May, continues to hold a lease for space at Mill Creek, the supermarket apparently has no plans to move back to the revamped mall.
When asked if another supermarket has expressed interest in replacing Stop & Shop, Hartz spokesman Ron Simoncini said, “We have nothing to announce.”
Mall gets ‘big box’ treatment
The Mill Creek renovations are part of what Hartz brass calls the “de-malling” of the shopping center.
As Simincini explained it, rather than being an enclosed indoor mall, Mill Creek will now be a collection of connected “big box” retailers. This, he said, is the current trend in retailing.
“The mall stopped working because malls have fallen out of favor,” Simoncini said. “The retail sector has gravitated to these ‘power center/lifestyle center’ facilities that that have more free-standing big box stores. We would have loved to keep the mall, and to keep all the stores we had there. But stores don’t want to be tied to a mall anymore. So as Mill Creek started to lose tenants our choices were limited. The market dictates what you do in real estate. If something is working you never change it. But once it stops, you have to be realistic.”
He added that only one traditional enclosed mall has opened in the U.S. within the last three years.
Mill Creek has a total of 313,000-square-feet, 85 percent of which Simoncini estimated is leased.
Still no supermarket
Ever since Stop & Shop closed its doors last spring several residents, especially senor citizens, have complained about the lack of a major grocery store in Secaucus. Some had hoped that Stop & Shop, or some other major chain, might move to Harmon Meadow once the renovations at the mall were completed.
In April, a spokesman for the company said Stop & Shop was closing its 44,000-square-foot Secaucus store because it was “an underperforming location.”
Stop & Shop is the second major supermarket to leave Secaucus in recent years. Acme, which occupied the Paterson Plank Rd. space where CVS is now, closed its doors in 2006.
Although the town has the Green Farmers Market near CVS, the store’s selection of goods is limited. The market has a nice selection of fruit and vegetables, but it sells few household items, canned goods, personal items, and other necessities.
Most residents drive to the Shop Rite locations in North Bergen or Lyndhurst for groceries. But senior citizens, many of whom don’t drive, found the old Stop & Shop more convenient and accessible than out-of-town markets.
Town officials are trying to lure another food store chain to Secaucus. So far, however, it has been a tough sell. Most major supermarkets want at least 60,000-square-feet of space, in addition to ample parking. Few areas in Secaucus meet this minimum requirement.
Smaller grocery store chains that might be willing to take over Stop & Shop’s old Mill Creek location may have another reason to avoid the site: Wal-Mart.
The discount giant has a pending application on file with the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission for a Super Wal-Mart grocery store. The Super Wal-Mart would open on Route 3 where Sam’s Club is currently located, which is across the street from the old Stop & Shop site. Town officials have stated that some supermarket chains have expressed concerns about moving to Harmon Meadow because they don’t want to directly compete with Wal-Mart.
Other controversies
The closure of the Stop & Shop isn’t the only controversy that grew out of the renovations at Mill Creek Mall.
After Hartz announced that it would begin the renovation project, the company offered to buy out the leases of several Mill Creek stores and relocate them to other Hartz properties in the area. Some businesses took Hartz up on the offer.
Others, however, did not.
In Sept. 2007 four tenants – Mahtani Jewelers, Nikki men’s clothing store, Ashanti women’s clothing store, and a nail salon – sued Hartz to remain in Mill Creek through the end of their leases.
A state superior court judge ultimately ruled that Hartz could force the tenants to out to make way for the renovations.
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